But what might be even worse is headline reading. Like you don't read articles like you use to. People read the headlines which are rage bait and click bait. Realtime rage on "developing stories" than nothing when the boring conclusion is known weeks later. People are going insane.
The death of the boring news paper is about as a big problem as Instagram. Modern newspapers just plainly sucks and are mostly rehashes of agency news anyways.
I think we need to figuratively pull the plug on the internet. Like make it some sort of loser thing to be hooked on social media and light minded news.
> stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered
--William F. Buckley Jr to Gore Vidal in 1968 on ABC television
Buckley also hosted a show on PBS at the time.
Joe Rogan didn't lie us into a disastrous $6 trillion war that destabilized the middle east, created all sorts of knock-on consequences such as mass immigration into Europe from the Middle East that we're still living with two decades later. Joe Rogan didn't spend decades cheerleading immigration, outsourcing, and globalization policies most Americans never wanted (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...).
Joe Rogan is popular because people can tell that his gut instincts and general world view are consistent with their own, which makes them trust his takes. If your alternative to that is people who believe in their hearts that the U.S. should bring democracy and human rights to the world, or take on millions of immigrants, you'll never get peoples' trust, just as you probably wouldn't trust someone who thinks the rapture is coming soon.
Most Americans do want their cheap toys and gas, and if you try to take them away, you’re not going to get voted out.
Don’t listen to what people say, listen to what they do.
If Americans didn’t want outsourcing and immigrants, they would have kept buying made in America goods and wouldn’t bitch about higher grocery / restaurant prices.
However, Americans (like any other group) never wanted to move down the relative socioeconomic rankings, especially relative to other Americans. So when they do, they start wanting to blame others for their lack of competitiveness with the other few billion people in the world.
By analogy, I prioritize my right over who enters my home over other considerations. I would like to let contractors and cleaners in, but only on my terms.
For example, one can be completely in favor of x amount of immigration, and be completely opposed to illegal immigration.
In the context of rayiner's post, the historic political cry of "immigrants bad" was not usually about illegal immigrants, it was about legal immigrants willing to work for less than people who grew up in America. There are plenty of records of anti Irish and anti Italian immigrant sentiment (or any other wave of ethnic migration that causes competition for the existing working class).
I would go so far as to say that current Republicans did skillfully weave the two political causes together in modern times to gain support of both those seeking law and order and those who dislike immigrants.
I think maybe that local level Democrats tarnished the national branding of Democrats by glorifying acceptance of illegal immigration, which might be popular in a select few cities or states, but not on the national stage (referring to sanctuary city policies).
>For example, one can be completely in favor of x amount of immigration, and be completely opposed to illegal immigration.
This proves nothing, illegal immigration can still be a subset. I like food but dont like apples. This doesnt prove an apple isnt food.
Illegal immigration has been the focus of the immigration debate in the US for at least the last 50 years. Politicians dont debate the optimal number of green cards and H1B visas on podium.
This is not an analogous situation or context. It would be logically consistent to support a policy of importing food, except for apples, if you think apples are causing a problem that other foods are not.
We were not discussing the existence of immigrants themselves, which yes, by definition, illegal immigrants are a subset of immigrants since they are immigrants. But that is not interesting nor useful to converse about.
We were discussing the acceptance of immigrants (legal) versus the acceptance of illegal immigrants.
Thats your take, not mine. I think the national conversation and rayiner's point is primarily about illegal immigration.
If you want to talk about why a big part of the US public feels betrayed, I think illegal immigration is both relevant and useful.
Clearly they don't - where are the federal criminal indictments for companies which employ thousands of illegal immigrants? How many employers went to prison for that in 2024? 2020? In Apr 2018 - Mar 2019 (2nd/3rd year of Trump-1), only 11 were even indicted [0].
Immigration is not a law and order issue for anyone other than low-information voters esp. in coming up to an election, when one party scapegoats the statistically small subset of (illegal) immigrants, the vast majority of whom don't commit serious crimes. Sanctuary should not apply to serious criminals. (There are certainly plenty of economic reasons to oppose illegal immigration, and to call on (both sides of) Congress to regularize their situation by adding new types of visa, because everyone acknowledges the US only functions on illegal labor; also they stabilize Social Security and never withdraw from it. Anthony Bourdain and the Texas construction industry both said as much.)
[0]: "How Many Employers Have Been Prosecuted for Employing Illegals?" https://hrexecutive.com/how-many-employers-have-been-prosecu...
So, because he lies in a way that makes them feel good, more angry at people they want to be angry.
I have no idea what his true thinking is. Or even what hes like away from the public eye.
Like Rayiner says, Rogan is not that smart, which combines with the confidence that comes from social and financial success and with the pressure to always be producing new content to cause him to make mistakes.
I think that says it all
Instead, people are outsourcing their thinking to people like Joe Rogan and political YouTubers who exploit that cynicism for sponsorships, ad revenue and their own product lines.
Say what you will about corporate media, and I'm also a big critic of it and even PBS, but at least something like PBS isn't pure brain rot and can be informative. I highly doubt Mr. Rogers or the News Hour radicalized anyone.
These days terrorists are literally putting internet memes in their manifestos, along with shout-outs to their favorite YouTubers and internet pundits.
> In many ways this is the real transformation change that the internet posited
The "real change" was the Arab Spring era and powers all over the world quickly learned to not let that happen in their own backyards.
We are currently experiencing a duality between domestic powers doing their best to stifle or direct change for their benefit, and external powers doing their best to generate unrest elsewhere to their benefit. The internet as it exists enables both to extents the world has never seen before.
> Manufactured consensuses aren't holding so easily and people are being forced to acknowledge the sausage factory behind them.
Manufactured consent has modernized, it's happening right now all over the internet. Tech has become the modern Skinner box for owners to manipulate users, and social media has absolutely warped the minds of at least one generation in favor of their owners, too.
I wish I had your optimism, and I did like ~20 years ago, but man, the internet is pure poison for the unprepared mind. And I think we're all varying levels of unprepared for the highly optimized digital manipulation on the internet.